


Could be all our demons darling

by Theladyknight23



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: A developing relationship in a series of meetings and collisions in a campus pub/cafe, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, F/F, Female Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Female Jaskier | Dandelion, Minor Aiden/Lambert (The Witcher), a bottle fic? is that a thing?, all the witchers are women, an attempt at a bottle episode, catch me taking the canonical university setting and just running with it, grad student Jaskier, snarky Jaskier, witcher geralt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:42:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28911786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theladyknight23/pseuds/Theladyknight23
Summary: She scanned the room, seizing upon a woman tucked in one corner.She looked like danger. Like bad news and tattoos and sharp truths and heartbreak.The kind of woman your mother told you to stay away from.Jaskier grinned. She would do.---A growing relationship in a series of collisions, disputes, threats and flirtations between a monster hunter and a grad student in the same campus pub.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There are so many wonderful witcher fics I hope no one will begrudge me writing yet another one with these gals
> 
> title from The Amazing Devil's "Wild Blue Yonder"

It was 3:30 pm on a Thursday afternoon and Jaskier was drunk.

Perhaps that was too strong a turn of phrase. Her current level of intoxication might be best described as ‘gently inebriated’ rather than shit faced, though she was doing her best to move steadily in that direction. Giving it the old college try and all that.

She slammed her glass on the polished wood of the bar and looked expectedly up at Dave.

Dave sighed and set to work pouring her another round.

“Put it on my tab, Dave dear.”

“Right,” he said dourly.

Sweeping up her drink, she offered him a dazzling smile he returned dully. She pushed herself off the barstool and turned to face the long room.

Jaskier was tired, lonely, intoxicated and about to make that someone else’s problem.

Most of the patrons of the café turned pub were clustered in groups of two or three, hunched over the heavy wooden tables, hands around mason jar glasses under the soft glow of the Edison string lights strung across the ceiling. The whole ambiance was trying just a little too hard, but undergrads tended to prefer the loud nightclub on the other side of campus, and the tacos were cheap on Tuesdays. That counted for something.

Jaskier scanned the room, seizing upon a woman tucked in one corner. She was studiously avoiding making eye contact with anyone, a chair standing empty before her table. She looked like danger. Like bad news and tattoos and harsh truths and heartbreak. The kind of woman your mother told you to stay away from.

Jaskier grinned. She would do.

“You,” said Jaskier, wagging a finger, sliding into the bench seat across from the woman, careful to avoid spilling her glass. “You look like you have some stories in you.”

The woman fixed Jaskier with her golden eyes and glared. That glower was a punch to the gut, enough to send one’s primordial senses into overdrive, but it would take more than that to shake Jaskier. She leaned her elbows on the table, casually resting her head against one hand, taking in the woman. Half of her silver white hair was pulled back, revealing a jaw like a perfect rhyme, a face like a soaring sonnet. Fine scars traced her face, punctuating those searing eyes.

The woman’s frown deepened.

“Go away,” she growled.

“I need some distraction and you look just the sort,” declared Jaskier. “Tell me what you did today at least.”

“No,” said the woman, taking a drink from a massive mason jar. She was all harsh lines and ragged edges, worn leather and busied knuckles.

“Please?” tried Jaskier, “then I swear I’ll fuck off and leave you to this whole brooding thing you’ve got going on here.”

The woman studied Jaskier for a long moment.

“Fine,” she grunted. “You want to know what I was doing today?”

Jaskier nodded eagerly.

“I spent the day hunting down two giant Araneae which I slayed with this sword,” she nodded casually towards a silver sword resting in the booth beside her, “I then brought their corpses to the student services building, where I was paid for my labour. Then I came here to have a drink.” The woman’s mouth raised into a jagged grin, and she downed her glass.

Jaskier huffed a laugh, shaking her head. “So, I’m supposed to believe you spent the day killing, what— _giant spiders_? With a sword?”

The woman shrugged. “It’s no difference to me if you believe it. It’s the truth.”

Jaskier leaned forward, raising her hand. She opened and closed her mouth several times, before laughing and shaking her finger at the woman. “You’re weird. I like you.”

This seemed to catch the woman off guard. She narrowed her eyes, studying Jaskier.

“Jaskier,” said Jaskier, offering her hand. After a moment, the woman stiffly took it and shook it.

“Geralt,” she said gruffly.

“Lovely,” said Jaskier, “really rolls off the tongue.”

“Has anyone ever mentioned that you talk too much?”

Jaskier grinned, seizing up her glass. “All the time. But what is life but a space to fill with noise and music? Music, wine and good company are all I need. Oh, that and grant money, but that’s rather a different story. You know when you’re twelve and you watch Milo Thatch and Evelyn Carnahan play academic in films and your head gets full of all these romantic ideas and then you get here and it’s just paperwork, stress and marking dull papers. And when you finally submit the dang grant application, and they want you to revise every fucking section--”

“I,” grunted Geralt, “have no idea what you are talking about.”

Jaskier sighed dramatically. “Such is the curse of my genius. To be forever misunderstood.”

“You truly do talk too much.”

“I like to have the last word,” said Jaskier, “there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Nothing wrong with silence either.”

“Yes, but it would be a pity to sit here silently when there is flirting to be done. And with so fascinating a brooding companion. I, for one, need to hear more about this monster-hunting business.”

Geralt drained the last dregs of her drink and set to gathering up her sword.

“What?” asked Jaskier, “Have I said something wrong?”

“Goodbye Jaskier,” said Geralt, standing and swinging the sword across her back as she rose.

“Same time next week, then?” called Jaskier as Geralt walked away.

Jaskier watched until Geralt and her sword disappeared from view. Turning back to the table, and finishing off her own glass, Jaskier resolved that she would have to keep an eye out for the golden-eyed stranger.

There were clearly more stories to pry out of this one.


	2. Chapter 2

It had been a long night.

It was still a long night, though the beginnings of the morning were already creeping through the windows.

Her lip was cracked, a cut that bled and burned when she opened her mouth. Geralt did so anyways, stuffing in a forkful of hash browns from the heaping plate set before her. Her mouth would heal soon enough, and she was starving.

There was blood under her fingernails, a bruise blooming on her cheeks, and a series of lacerations slipping down her left leg. Sitting beside her on the bench seat was a freshly cleaned sword. In the back of her truck, covered in a battered old tarp, was the body of something that used to be a monster but now was simply dead. She had hoped to save it, to bring the monster that was a _monster_ by no fault of its own somewhere far away. She had managed it earlier this week, receiving a new set of scars across her forearms for her troubles. It wasn’t to be tonight. They had spent hours stalking each other across the sprawling campus until she had finally cornered it against the thick concrete walls of the brutalist math building. The blood looked enough like graffiti against the dark concrete that she didn’t bother trying to clean it. She had enough work set out for herself dragging the body back to the truck, fingers griped tight in the slowly cooling fur.

They built brutalist buildings to be functional, she knew, a way of cramming more people in. She’d also heard they built them to keep students from rioting, violence as ever bubbling beneath the surface. She didn’t know whether that was true. Didn’t care. What she did know was that packing so many bodies so close, all set to the same desperate rhythm, rising and falling to the beats of the same calendar was bound to breed unspeakable things.

Every few years, the official email informed her, a Witcher would be contracted to provide the necessary services on campus. The call arrived in her inbox with a fancy masthead followed by a beautiful string of zeroes, and she drove through the night to make it in time. The balding man in the main office managed something that was almost a real smile when she arrived, remarking as he typed away at the form that she would make the campus safe to walk at night again.

She had laughed in his face, signed the contract and set out on the hunt.

As if a silver sword could rid the world of all its monsters.

* * *

The contract was steady money, much better than bouncing across the continent sleeping in her truck. She loved Roach, but she also loved a good hot shower. With her signing bonus she found a place that rented by the week not far from campus, a little pre-furnished room, sparce but clean. Emmeline blinked twice when she saw Geralt, then brushed back her perfectly coiffed grey hair with one elegant hand and told Geralt to holler if she needed more towels. Emmeline wore the past like a fine boa and smoked like a sailor. She had secrets and didn’t demand Geralt’s, so they made a fine enough pair. Geralt kept living out of her battered duffel bag and didn’t think about how she’d miss Emmeline when she left. She hadn’t unpacked for a long time.

She did go home some winters, but home was a place heavy with love and loss. Sometimes the weight of all of that was too much, and she couldn’t face her mother and sisters.

Geralt spent last Yule holed up in a chain café, drinking shitty overpriced coffee and scrounging off their wifi. She skyped Vesemir, making some excuse about a contract, low coin and shit travelling conditions with the snow. Vesemir nodded and said it was fine, that there was always next year, but Geralt knew she saw right through the lie.

Her phone rang an hour later. “You fucking fuck.”

“Hi Lambert.”

“I drove two days straight to get here, you prick, and you couldn’t bother to make it?”

Geralt didn’t say anything, didn’t have to. If Geralt’s thoughts about home were a mess, Lambert’s were a nuclear disaster. Geralt tilted her head back to stare up at the dark night, feeling the cold brush of snow falling in clumps. It was cold but she didn’t want to go inside. She listened to Lambert rant for a while, about the baby goat Eskel brought home (“she knit it a fucking sweater, Geralt. A freaking _sweater_ ”) and the maddening run in she’d had a week before with another Witcher—"She popped out of nowhere like some kind of weasel, and just started flinging knives at the Griffin. Cats are fucking nuts man.”

Geralt stood there in the snow and let the sounds wash over her until her hands grew numb.

“I’ve gotta go,” she said finally.

“You better be here next year dickface.”

“Love you too dirtwad.”

* * *

It was early October, Yule was still months away, and she was stuck waiting in this yuppie campus pub until the main office opened and she could register the dead creature in the back of her truck.

She forced her thoughts back on her breakfast.

She should call them again soon; she knew she should.

Geralt took another big bite of hash-browns and smeared jam over the buttered toast.

She had been pleasantly shocked to find this place open while re-tracing her steps across campus, checking to make sure she’d sufficiently covered her tracks. It seemed like more of an afternoon-evening kind of place, but a tired server offered her a laminated menu with ‘breakfast’ spelled out in cursive along the top and told Geralt to pick a table. A perky looking 20-something man came in shortly after Geralt, claiming a seat in the back of the pub and immediately beginning to type away with far too much energy. Other than the two of them and the small clump of sleepy-looking servers the place was empty.

Geralt almost didn’t recognize Jaskier when she stumbled in.

She was buried in a massive hoodie, hair desperately escaping a messy bun, dark circles around her eyes. She smelled like old books, stale coffee, stress and a scent Geralt hadn’t meant to memorize. Something chaotic, dramatic and a little wild, a resilient and shining thing.

There were at least two dozen empty tables scattered around the room, but Jaskier ignored them all. Yawning, she slumped into the seat across from Geralt and offered her a weary moan.

“You would not believe the night I just had,” she said, reaching out and snagging a piece of toast off Geralt’s plate.

Geralt set down her cup of coffee.

“I spent the first half reworking my MLA paper into fucking Chicago before realizing I got two journals mixed up and then had to spend the other half of the night reformatting it into Harvard. UGH, I love them, but citations are the worse,” Jaskier slumped her head down on the table and took a mournful bite of toast. “I’m so tired,” she moaned, spitting breadcrumbs.

Geralt blinked. Her night had been far too long for this.

Jaskier finished her toast and reached out for another but Geralt slapped her hand away, stamping down a growl.

“Bully,” said Jaskier grumpily, forcing herself up from the table with a groan, and staggering over to the bar. She was back a moment later, reverently cradling a massive cup of coffee.

“So yeah, that’s how my life is going. I am, as the poets would say, a fucking disaster.”

“What are you doing?” demanded Geralt. Now was not the time for this shit.

“Uh eating breakfast? I’ve been in the library for literal hours.”

“This place is full of empty tables.”

“And see, I thought we were friends,” said Jaskier, resting her head back down against the table. “Friends like to talk to friends. Tell me about your night. Tell me about your monsters.”

Geralt thought about the fear and rage in the creature’s eyes when she backed it against the concrete wall. After a night of brief but violent confrontations, it had only taken one sweeping slice of her silver sword. “No.”

Jaskier sat up. “Why not? You did last time.”

“This isn’t a game.”

“I didn’t say it was.”

Geralt stared at Jaskier. People didn’t ask what she did on principle. It was the kind of secret you smothered. In her experience most people were vaguely aware of the existence of monsters but other than concentrated examples like this university campus, monsters were dying out. Just like Witchers.

“Who are you? Why do you want to know?”

Jaskier huffed a little laugh. “Can’t you tell from the bags under my eyes? I’m a Ph.D. student here. I think the better question to ask is who you are.”

Staring down at Jaskier’s eager face, the words slipped out of her. “I’m a Witcher.”

A crinkle formed across Jaskier’s brow as she studied Geralt. “Most people say Witchers are fairy tales.”

“Most people are wrong.”

Jaskier’s lips twisted up in the corners, her eyes widening. “So, your monsters then? Is that what happened to your face?”

“Yes.”

Geralt didn’t know how she had gotten here. How this conversation was even happening. The exhausted grad student across from her was staring with wildly growing interest.

“Tell me,” demanded Jaskier, leaning forward.

“No.”

“Please?” wheedled Jaskier, pressing her hands together in supplication.

“What? So, you’ll ‘ _fuck off and leave me alone’_?”

Jaskier winced as Geralt quoted her own words back to her and offered an awkward, toothy smile. “Pretty please?”

Other than passing remarks to Emmeline in the hall, Geralt kept her words to herself. But Jaskier never seemed to just take no for an answer. She could just get up and leave, but there was still half a plate full of breakfast still in front of her, and at least thirty minutes until the main office opened.

Jaskier was staring up at her with wide pleading eyes. She looked ridiculous.

“Fine,” grunted Geralt, and told Jaskier the bare bones of the night. Where she started her hunt, where it ended. The monster that might have been a raccoon once, though she couldn’t say for certain.

“Shit,” breathed Jaskier, “fuck that’s—that’s amazing. Tell me more.”

“I already told you what happened.”

“Are you always this stingy with details?” shot Jaskier but she was grinning in open-mouthed wonder.

Jaskier’s food arrived before Geralt was forced to answer, a heaping plate of waffles drizzled in chocolate syrup and strawberries, and Jaskier was temporarily distracted by stuffing her face and groaning in delight.

“Fuck—I love waffles,” she said.

Geralt expected that to be the end of the conversation. It wasn’t.

“What it is like then? Being a Witcher?”

“It’s just what I do,” said Geralt. “That’s all it is.” And it was. They made her into a Witcher, so she was. And if she spent too much time in her own head thinking about being a Witcher, of what it meant, and who she was, that was no business of Jaskier’s.

“Do you always get hurt?” asked Jaskier, voice soft.

Geralt hummed and shrugged. The world had sharp teeth and she kept throwing herself at it (intentionally or not). She was bound to get hurt in the process.

Jaskier finished off her plate and shoved it aside, wrapping her hands around her coffee cup. Now that the excitement of Witchers and sugar rush had settled slightly, Geralt could see the exhaustion creeping back in. Jaskier yawned and pulled the elastic out of her hair, running a hand through her short hair until it a wild mess. She groaned and slumped back in her chair. “I want to hear so much more but I am so tired.”

Exhaustion weighed at Geralt’s own bones, the temptation to yawn and slump. She took another sip of coffee.

“Sometimes I love this, this whole being a grad student,” said Jaskier suddenly. “and sometimes I hate it so much. There is this entire world out there, so many other things I could be doing, and I’m here pulling all-nighters in the library over citations. I can almost imagine myself out there—but the picture is still fuzzy,” she yawned again, staring down at the mug in her hand. “It’s weird how much we can love something we hate. Or maybe it’s the other way around.”

Geralt didn’t say anything. The words were still echoing in her.

Jaskier laughed. “Sorry, that was morose. The sad bits come out when I’m tired.” She pulled out her phone and checked the time. “As much as I would love to stay and chat, I am quite literally going to pass out,” Jaskier pushed herself to her feet and stretched. “We _will_ talk again, Geralt. I need to hear more. See you around friend.”

“We aren’t friends,” said Geralt automatically, mind still full of all that she had heard. All that this night (and now morning) had been.

Jaskier only offered her a sleepy grin and headed for the door, waving to the servers as she went.

* * *

The bright light of the morning sun illuminated the front hall, lighting up the collection of framed photos against the floral wallpaper. Geralt paused to look, one hand wrapped around the wooden banister, one foot poised on the first step. She was exhausted, she had cuts to clean and a sword to stow away. And still, she couldn’t help but look. She hadn’t paid any mind to the pictures before, but she could see now that they were a collection of monochromatic and faded photos. One frame was particularly polished to a gleam, given the pride of place and shining in sunlight.

“That’s me and my Edie,” said Emmeline suddenly, the tap of her polished cane against the wooden floors as she came to stand beside Geralt.

The black and white photo showed two women. The tallest one was recognizably Emmeline, young and grinning, hair pulled back in an easy and elegant twist. Her arms were thrown around the shorter woman in front of her, who was wearing coveralls and a small but true smile. Emmeline ran a finger reverentially over the frame.

“She was quiet like you.”

Emmeline turned and slowly walked down the hall, leaving Geralt alone with the wall of memories.

* * *

After showering and changing into worn sweatpants and a t-shirt, Geralt stared down at her duffel bag. The jumble of clothes, leather armor and bandages that was her life.

Pulling a hanger from the large wooden wardrobe, she began to unpack.

She would have to leave soon enough—but she was here now.

She might as well try to be here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just casually projecting my recent citation fiasco onto J


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: brief panic attack

She was unravelling.

In a minute Jaskier would be fine. In a minute she’d leave this grungy bathroom stall, smear more glitter across her cheeks and find a couple of someones to kiss. In a minute this heartbreak would be music, this yearning would be another story to spin. She’d rip out the hurt and let the world revel in the bloody entrails. In a minute she would find her grin.

But right now, in this moment, she was unravelling.

In her right hand she held the open wound, an exploding star in a string of text messages across a cracked cell phone screen. Jaskier had been so caught up in the shine, the way it made her burn magnesium bright, she hadn’t realized it was already dead. She'd floated through her days, slacking off coursework to bask in its glow. Two weeks ago, they had spent hours texting about Halloween, joking about the parties they would visit, the skimpy costumes they would don and peel off each other at the end of the night. Then silence.

The star was dead and Jaskier was left desperately clinging to its remains. She sent message after message, flinging her words into the abyss; the only sign of life when her phone quietly informed her that they were read. The words were arriving then, but she didn’t want Jaskier’s words anymore.

Tonight, she sent one final plea, “Meet you at the Club?”

“stop,” said the void, the ghost, a thousand bits of stardust, and Jaskier was stumbling into the bathroom and slamming the stall door shut behind her. Here, with her eyes screwed shut, unravelling.

Too much and not enough. That was Jaskier.

She took a deep breath, and then another. She wrinkled her nose and let out a hollow laugh. For all the Club’s pretensions, its bathrooms were not someplace one wanted to linger.

This was good, she would make it good. Symphonies were built on despair, sonnets on woe. She would take this, and it would make her great. Jaskier was still spinning out, but she gripped the parts that were drifting and held them close, forced herself to take another calming breath. It was time to leave this bathroom. There was a world waiting to fall in love with her, a world to fall in love with. She had so many words to write on Virginia de Stael, so much more to wring out of this tearing in her chest, but first the night was waiting. Jaskier intended to seize it all.

Pushing open the stall door and surveying the damage in the mirror, Jaskier pulled a face and snickered. It looked largely salvageable if she leaned into the smoky eye look. A handful of paper towel, Fresh lipstick, another layer of glitter on her cheeks and more in her tumbled curls and she was ready. It was time to leave a trail of glimmer and longing looks in her wake. With a final nod and wink to her reflection, Jaskier set off, swinging open the door with a dramatic shove. The star was dead, but there were plenty more to adore.

She was fine.

She was.

The lights were turned low, and the room was packed, a shuffling mass of bodies pressed close and eager. There was loud and thumping music, some early 2000s hit people were delightfully sing-shouting along to. Most were wearing costumes, differing in quality from clearly store-bought to t-shirts with witty slogans pinned with duct tape, dramatic face paint, and all manner of professions turned promiscuous. 

Jaskier herself was wearing a vaguely medieval-looking dress she’d found at the back of her closet, a slightly crushed pair of children’s fairy wings held in place with stretched elastic, and a flower crown set jauntily on her head. She’d hitched the dress up on one side, looping the end around her belt, and now the skirts swept around her knees, trailing lower in the back. It was a good look, a _great_ look, and she could already feel the appreciative gazes following her, light and intoxicating like bubbling champagne in her mouth. Jaskier grinned and it was so very close to being real. She studied the crowd, preparing to pick her first partner for the night when she saw her.

There among the colour and the noise was one silver-haired woman leaning against the wall, valiantly attempting to ignore it all and drink. Her shoulders were stiff, her leather jacket was black, and she was emanating ‘don’t fuck with me’ vibes.

“Geralt!” called Jaskier, weaving her way over, ducking around a group of costumes that were a good deal shorter than the ones the characters wore in the show.

Geralt looked up to meet Jaskier’s shout, before turning back to her glass. She looked deeply uncomfortable at the revelry unfolding around her.

“What are you doing here? Did you forget what night it is?” asked Jaskier, shouting to be heard over the music.

Geralt’s scowl deepened. “I didn’t think it would be such a big deal.”

Jaskier laughed and took up a position beside Geralt against the wall, crumpling her fairy wings even more, shoulders almost touching.

“Halloween is a major holiday on campus. Actually, pretty much any holiday that provides an excuse to excessively drink is popular with this crowd.” She cast her arms out to encompass the crowd around them. “That doesn’t explain why you are here in the midst of all of this, attempting to hold the world’s grumpiest one-woman pity party.”

Geralt scowled, but it didn’t hold any real bite. If anything, she seemed tired. There were new scratches on her face since Jaskier had seen her last, a wrapped bandage around one wrist, but nothing that looked too fresh. “I told my landlady I would be gone for the night, and I was already—” Jaskier lost the rest of Geralt’s words under the screeching of the speakers. They were playing some grating electronica dubstep now, the kind that was practically impossible to dance to, but DJs still insisted on putting on. 

“What!?” shouted Jaskier, leaning closer.

“I said, I was already here, I thought I might as well get a drink,” shouted Geralt, tilting her head towards Jaskier.

“No costume?” asked Jaskier.

“No, I don’t do that,” grunted Geralt, and Jaskier shifted, trying to catch the sound of Geralt’s voice before the whirlwind around them drowned it out.

“I’m a fairy or maybe some kind of pseudo-medieval tavern wench,” offered Jaskier, unprompted. “Hah, I just realized if I’d brought my guitar, I could have been some kind of bard. Not that I’d risk any musical instrument amongst all of this. But still—that would have been more on brand.”

Jaskier couldn’t hear it, but she saw Geralt let out a strangled bark of laughter, and that sight—the flash of too sharp canines, the teasing hint of a smile—filled her with heady, fizzing joy.

“Fairies don’t look like that,” shouted Geralt, and Jaskier closed the distance between them, gently resting her shoulder against Geralt’s own.

Craving a star had been distant and cold, a longing for something intangible, just out of her reach. To the star she was nothing, just another hopeless admirer gazing up at its sky.

_Too much and not enough._

Geralt said nothing when their shoulders connected, but she didn’t pull away.

This was warm and it was solid, and Jaskier’s skin hummed. She blinked back the tears that welled at the thought of Virginia and leaned into that touch. It didn’t fix things, didn’t mend the freshly torn heart, but it helped.

“Your monsters?” called Jaskier.

“Too many people,” grunted Geralt sourly, setting down her drink. Jaskier beamed at the thought of this grumpy monster hunter turning up for a night of fighting, only to find campus crawling with all manner of drunk partiers.

A thought occurred to her and she stiffened, jostling their shoulders. “Is it dangerous? Being out on campus at night like this? With the monsters?”

“No. Too many people,” repeated Geralt and Jaskier laughed.

“Good, because I didn’t have any plans on getting eaten by some beast on my way home. I’m far too pretty and beloved to die,” she shouted back, Geralt shook her head with fond exasperation, and Jaskier felt a thread of happiness shoot through her.

The music shifted, into a pop love ballad with a nice beat. This was the kind of music you could dance to, and Jaskier wanted to dance. She needed to dance. Dancing was as far as you could get from exploding stars and bathroom stall meltdowns.

“Dance with me!” she shouted to Geralt.

Geralt’s brow furrowed and she shook her head.

“Come on!” wheedled Jaskier. She needed this, needed to dance with someone who was real, and solid and standing before her. From the dark circles around Geralt’s eyes, the worn set to her shoulders, it looked like she needed this too.

“No,” shouted Geralt.

“Please! Then I’ll fuck off,” said Jaskier. She tried to keep her words light, but a hint of something raw slipped through before she could hold it in.

Geralt tilted her head, staring down at Jaskier with those golden eyes.

“I’m starting to think you don’t know what ‘leave you alone’ means,” she grumbled, but there was something warm in that growl. 

Jaskier had an excuse now, so she took it, reaching out to grab Geralt’s uninjured hand with her own. It felt oh so daring, but Jaskier was so tired of empty hands. “C’mon friend. One dance.”

Geralt’s eyes widened, but she didn’t yank her hand away. “I’m not your friend,” she said.

Geralt was taller and stronger and had definitely seen more fights than Jaskier, but she did nothing but grumble as Jaskier pulled her away from the wall. The crowd shifted as Jaskier shoved their way in, and they were quickly surrounded by swaying bodies.

The music swept through her, catching up her heart and setting it to a new wondrously wild rhythm. Her world might be broken, and she might be impossibly behind on her course readings, but there was still music and this beautiful Witcher before her. Jaskier threw back her arms and beamed, and the smile on her lips was real. Geralt stayed close, hands brushing Jaskier’s as she danced, moving with a grace that was not born of dancing.

Geralt lasted till the end of the song, and that was more than Jaskier had ever expected.

“I have to go,” she shouted, leaning close to Jaskier’s ear, sending delicious shivers down Jaskier’s back. “Do patrols.”

For the second time that night, Jaskier dared to take Geralt’s hand in her own. Her hand exploded with warmth. This was the opening bars of a song so beloved a part of it lived inside of you always, the poem you scrawled across your skin until you could feel the echo of it forever. 

“Thank you,” she said, and Geralt nodded. There was a bit of colour in her pale cheeks, but that might have just been the warmth of the room, the close press of other bodies.

Jaskier let go and Geralt was gone.

The music shifted again, to a recent club hit and the crowd around her screamed with delight. Jaskier joined them, adding her voice to the wild choir. Geralt might be gone again, but three times had to be akin to something like fate. They would see each other again soon.

Jaskier laughed and threw herself into the music.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holding hands??? could you imagine???


End file.
